Has anybody tried the Helix Lateral Trainer:

It’s totally the best. The movement is just like dancing.

I’m so glad we switched from the Y to this small local gym. It’s a lot more tranquil in the evenings and there is always cool new equipment. And N has a lot of space for his martial arts routines. He’s very tall and when he does the sweeping martial arts moves there need to be no people for half a mile around.

I’ve started working with my research assistant. This is going to be very cool. I have so much going on research-wise right now that I really need this help. And I’m not giving the RA any stupid busywork assignments where he will have to languish for hours by the copier. The copier will not be involved at all*. I only give out intellectual assignments that are professionally enriching to the RA. And helpful to me.

I remember when I first got hired as an RA, I kept persecuting the professors (I was hired by two people at the same time) to give me more and more assignments. I think I got them to the point of having nervous palpitations whenever they saw me. I was a very responsible student with OCD tendencies.

For people who are about to start unraveling as a result of the news about my RA: it’s OK, this doesn’t mean the big bad wolf is about to devour your “taxpayer money.” Everything is fine. You can breathe now.

* I have just realized that the copier, a machine that used to be so central to my research, has now stopped being part of my scholarly activities altogether. It’s still huge in my teaching, though.

People have shown interest in how I waste the time that the state of Illinois pays me for. Since there is such an intense curiosity towards my schedule, I will keep sharing it until such time as I feel that the public education system is sufficiently vindicated.

Thursday, January 15.

8-9 – breakfast and reading the news.

9-11 – writing the proposal for a book chapter

11-12 – responding to work email and organizing a library workshop for my researchers.

12-14 – writing the proposal and submitting it.

14-15 – lunch.

15-17 – office hours.

17-20 – teaching the literature seminar.

20-21:30 – gym.

I’m on military time, as you can see.

Does anybody have any more criticisms of the public education system to offer?

The reason why I don’t remove Ian Welsh and Co from my blogroll is that it is useful to have a measure of insanity at hand. I get many comments on this blog and it isn’t always obvious whether the authors are fit to participate in discussions. So I ask myself how similar the comment is to Walsh ‘ s writings and immediately know if I should let it appear on my blog.

According to this analysis, the most popular cuisine in my state is Pakistani. I wonder if people who create these maps ever visit the states they write about. In Chicago, one can find Pakistani food if one really tries but Illinois is enormous and there is a lot more than Chicago in it. I only wish we were sophisticated enough to have bunches of Pakistani restaurants everywhere. Gosh, I’d be happy with just one.

I watched a CNN debate last night between a rabbi and a Muslim college professor and I’ve got to say, the rabbi made some good points while the professor made a really bad impression.

The rabbi was saying that, given everything that’s been going on, one would expect a more active response to fundamentalists from moderate, non-fundamentalist Muslims. Everybody is waiting for an active and loud repudiation of the fanatics on the part of mainstream Muslims. But there hasn’t been one. Everything interesting and meaningful that I have read online, seen on TV and heard in person on the subject of Charlie Hebdo came from non-Muslims. The only interesting pieces on whether the attacks are related to Islam, honestly, came from me. All I’ve seen and heard from Muslims on the subject was the sulky, “The cartoonists were insulting my identity, so why should I be on their side?” (this was a tweet somebody linked to that made me cringe with disgust.) I’m not denying the possibility that moderate Muslims are saying more valuable and insightful things than this infantile bit of extreme idiocy but they are not getting the message out very well. And I was glad to hear the rabbi finally state the painfully obvious: we are all waiting. Give us something here.

The Muslim professor unfortunately chose to take the position of sulky infantilism, as well. His position was “But why do we have to give any explanations if we haven’t done anything?” As a professor, I’m sure he is well aware of how silly this approach is. The Pope apologized for the Inquisition he obviously didn’t contribute to. The King of Spain apologized for the expulsion of the Jews that wasn’t even perpetrated by his royal family. This had been done several royal families away and many centuries earlier, yet he still apologized. Germans are paying reparations to Jews and Ukrainians, even though neither Merkel nor today’s German taxpayers are guilty of the Holocaust.

I can’t imagine a situation where people would come to me asking me to explain what is going on in Ukraine and I’d adopt a pouty expression and respond, in a petulant voice, that I don’t see why I have to explain anything and that all Ukrainians are different. As a Russian-speaker, I’ve been doing nothing but repudiating Putinoids and distancing myself from the Russian neo-fascism. And I don’t think that it’s somehow beneath me to do that. And by the way, unlike a religious identity, the linguistic identity can’t be chosen, changed, or abandoned.

The rabbi obviously won the debate. Here is an excerpt from his article:

We rightly don’t wish to identify Islam as an inherently violent religion. I have repeatedly argued against this belief and brought proofs from history. We don’t want to tar regular, everyday G-d fearing Muslims who simply wish to observe their faith in peace with a violent brush. . .

What we have every right to expect is that Muslims of every stripe and denomination condemn violence in the name of Islam, dismiss Imams who promote violence, and cast out any and all Islamic voices who call for bloodletting in Islam’s name. The time has come for a coordinated world march—by Muslims—against Islamic violence. If 30,000 Muslims can march in the streets of Paris and London last summer to condemn Israel, then surely they can also march to condemn violence in Islam’s name. Imagine the impact of a million Muslims marching in New York, London, Paris, and Jerusalem to condemn all violence in the name of Islam. Imagine the statement it would make to whose who seek to hijack Islam and turn it violent.

I think Rabbi Shmuley is definitely on to something here. Islam used to be a great religion with an enormous civilizational potential that prevented Europe from sliding completely into barbarity. Muslims gave the Western civilization back to the West after it was almost entirely lost. And that is an enormous gift of historic significance. And now Islam is being hijacked by a small minority of vicious cannibals while nobody seems to do anything productive about it.

As you probably know, ISIS posted a video yesterday, showing a 10 – year-old boy executing two Russian men. The video identified the two men as FSB (former KGB) agents.

This is not getting any coverage in Russia because Russians have found themselves in a weird situation. One the one hand, Russia is fighting a war to repel the hated West with its “degenerate values.” On the other, Russia is still lumped with the West when it comes to killing Western hostages. So now Russians are left without a narrative where they could fit two Russian hostages slaughtered by ISIS.

It must also be embarrassing to lose two people to ISIS two seconds after engaging in a collective mocking of the victims of the terror attacks in France.